Nutella Day reminder: Nutella cookies, for the wait

I am posting these ‘nutella’ inspired cookies hoping that you will be inspired as well. Saturday is World Nutella day – fun, isn’t it? Last year I tried making my own Nutella version, because actually, of all things, I’m not really a Nutella person, though I definitely am a chocolate-and-hazelnut person. Tthat his year, you’ll see it on Saturday, but let me say that I am quite pleased with the results I am currently munching, together with these cookies.
I have already told you how much I loved the whole wheat cookies from ‘Good to the grain’; since then, I have been baking these regularly for family and friends. I came up with a few tips- mainly, reduce sugar a bit, make sure you use very good bitter chocolate – and baked a very nice version without chocolate chips, but with chopped walnuts. I’m preparing a recipe for the World Nutella Day 2011, and I had some collateral goods left – of course, these includes chopped hazelnuts and chocolate. And when I saw these cookies at Lara Ferroni, I could not resist the urge to try them: this was the perfect occasion. I was really surprised by the result of the experiment, maybe due to me tweaking Lara’s recipe a bit. Actually I probably changed the recipe considerably in the conversion, because my dough was quite thick from the start, and could be easily handled with the hands. The resulting cookies were very different from the original whole wheat chocolate ones, equally delicious, but different. They have a firmer, crunchier, lighter texture, they are not chewy at all, and they have the strongest flavour of hazelnuts and cacao ever. I did not expect that since there are not that many hazelnuts in it, nor cacao.

Cream sugar with butter. When fluffy, add the egg and vanilla extract. Add the hazelnuts. Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda. Add them to the butter cream, until everything is uniform. Add in the chocolate chips and the salt. Mix well again.

To bake immediately, make balls with a tablespoon of the dough, flatten them a bit and bake for about 15 minutes, until still a bit soft but set. You can chill the dough in logs and keep it in fridge or freezer for a while.